The Hong Kong Modernism of Leung Ping-kwan

This book examines the major modernist tenets embodied in Leung’s literary works. The author argues that Leung paid special attention to issues regarding tradition, daily life, and colonial culture in order to understand his past, his identity, and the unique features of Hong Kong modernism.

This book resolves around the fundamental question, “What is Hong Kong modernism?” To address this issue, C.T. Au identifies three significant characteristics: a renewal of traditions, an obsession with ordinary things, and an expression of concerns about social and political issues, shared among Western modernisms, Chinese modernism in the 1940s, and such Hong Kong modernists as Ma Lang, Liu Yichang, and Leung Ping-kwan (Yasi/Ye Si). This research concentrates on an examination of the major modernist tenets embodied in Leung’s literary works. Leung Ping-kwan is one of the most prominent and widely read Hong Kong modernist writers; however, there exist only a few scholarly works which focus on the direct relationship between Leung’s works and modernisms. The author argues that Leung paid special attention to issues regarding tradition, daily life, and colonial culture in order to understand his past, his identity, and the unique features of Hong Kong modernism, which celebrate multiple perspectives and inclusiveness. This study not only helps differentiate Hong Kong modernism from other modernisms—positioning the former as a variant of the latter—but also provides a response to the problems evoked by Hong Kong’s colonial milieu.